SMOG (Russian: СМОГ) was one of the earliest informal literary groups independent of the Soviet state in the post-Stalin Soviet Union.
Among several interpretations of the acronym are Smelost', Mysl', Obraz i Glubina (Courage, Thought, Image and Depth), and, humorously, Samoe Molodoe Obshchestvo Geniev (Society of Youngest Geniuses).
It was organized in January/February 1965 by a group of young poets and writers: Poet Leonid Gubanov (initiator, membership card #1); writer and editor Vladimir Batshev [ru] (membership card #2); poet and publicist Yuri Kublanovsky; Vladimir Aleynikov [ru], a poet who received the Andrei Bely Prize; and poets Nikolai Bokov and Arkady Pakhomov [ru], later joined by several dozens of others.
[3][4][5][6]: 15 The group held public poetry readings and issued several samizdat collections and a magazine, Sfinksy ("Sphynxes").
[7] Some members also helped organize the unsanctioned 1965 glasnost rally calling for a legal trial of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel.